A new medical study recommends a method called “nasal packing with strips of cured pork” as an effective way to treat “uncontrollable” nosebleeds:

“Nasal Packing With Strips of Cured Pork as Treatment for Uncontrollable Epistaxis in a Patient with Glanzmann Thrombasthenia,” Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, vol. 120, no. 11, November 2011, pp. 732-36. (Thanks to James H. Morrissey for bringing this to our attention.)

The authors, at Detroit Medical Center in Michigan, treated a girl who has a rare hereditary disorder that brings prolonged bleeding. They pack the essential details into two sentences:

Cured salted pork crafted as a nasal tampon and packed within the nasal vaults successfully stopped nasal hemorrhage promptly, effectively, and without sequelae…. To our knowledge, this represents the first description of nasal packing with strips of cured pork for treatment of life-threatening hemorrhage in a patient with Glanzmann thrombasthenia.

They acknowledge a long, occasional tradition of using pork to treat general epitaxis. Epitaxis is the dignified term for nosebleed. The technique fell into disuse, they speculate, because:

packing with salt pork was fraught with bacterial and parasitic complications. Accordingly, as newer synthetic hemostatic agents and surgical techniques evolved, the use of packing with salt pork diminished.

In 1976, Dr. Jan Weisberg of Great Lakes, Illinois wrote a letter to a medical journal, bragging that he, together with a doctor Strother and a Dr. Newton, had been “privileged” to treat a man “for epistaxis secondary to Rendu-OslerWeber disease”, an inherited problem in which blood vessels develop abnormally.

To the Editor: Several local physicians contend that salt pork is the material of choice for the control of epistaxis. Has salt pork for such purpose ever been advocated by outstanding otolaryngologists; and, if so, is it still advocated by them?

—Philip J. Bayon, M.D., Natchez, Miss

Answer.—Although the use of salt pork for the control of epistaxis has long been advocated, it has never been selected as a material of choice by the majority of otolaryngologists.

In 1953, Dr. Henry Beinfield in Brooklyn, New York, published a treatise:

In Dr. Cone’s experience: it has not been uncommon in the St. Louis Children’s Hospital service to have a child request that salt pork be inserted in his nose with the first sign of a nosebleed…. Wedgesof salt pork have saved a great deal of time and energy when used in controlling nasal hemorrhage, as seen in cases of leukemia, hemophilia… hypertension… measles or typhoid fever and during the third stage of labor; the relief of anxiety of the patient and all concerned was particularly gratifying.

It is hard to say just what the action of the pork is, since several factors are present, namely, pressure, salt, tissue juices and fat…. Usually I do not use any outside dressing to hold the pork in place, as it will slip out in a few hours and there is no more bleeding. However, I have had it remain in the nose as long as three days and be as clean when removed as it was when introduced.

It was thought that salt from the pork draws water to the nasal tissues, making them swell up and squeeze close the broken blood vessels. The doctors in this study add that the salt pork may contain proteins that help blood coagulate, though the exact mechanism of how it stops bleeding is still unknown.